CHAPTER ONE—“PRETTY BAD HAUL”

When Jon Freeman got off his motorcycle and looked across the Aru Bay, and the green-grey sludge pouring into the water—almost luminescent, he knew what he had stumbled upon was a much wider plot than he had originally thought possible.

This was not acceptable, and now he even wondered if locking up Orgowa Sosai was the right call. He wrinkled his nose. The stench on the wind, which Jon knew was from that toxic sludge drop, smelled like a mixture of burnt rubber and other chemicals so corrosive to the senses, he wondered if they might give him degenerative diseases.

He coughed.

“Damn.”

Then he flicked out his finger display and called his partner Ushiara Kenn. She was a real hard ass for the assignment, which meant once she completed it, she left all other questions to fall to the wayside.

He hated that.

But even now, he had only been partnered with her for three months. There was other good qualities about his partner. She was damn driven, that was for sure.

The call beeped a few times and then she answered. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“So I was digging around in Sosai’s lab and I found some interesting indications.”

“Such as?”

“I think I know what he was intending to blow up.”

“Yeah? she asked, her tone almost bored. “And what’s that?”

“It’s a toxic fuel dump from some factory. I’m on the corner of Doz and Hakoaido.” He glanced about. “Can you check out the company for me?” He looked around and everywhere there were smoke stacks pipes running along the roads and above the roads. The smog hanging in the air made the place look like an early morning fog cover.

“What’s the point?” she asked. “Let the prosecution squeeze that out of him.”

“Come on, Kenn,” he said, almost pleading but his tone also held an air of frustration, that same frustration he was feeling. He should have expected this. “Don’t you want to get down to the bottom of this? Sosai could have accomplices!”

“Not our problem,” she said. “We nabbed him. The evidence is up to the crime scene guys—not us.”

“And it’s not their job to go investigating leading evidence, either.”

She sighed. “If they find something they’ll be sure to assign a team to it, Jon.” There was a pause, then she continued, her tone running low on patience, “Look. I know you like playing the whole ‘rookie cop’ with his nose-in the-knows, thing, but my advice to you is to just drop it, and remember who pays the bills around here.”

“What the hells?” he said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What is means is, the department received a lot of money from around these parts, and if you go barking up the wrong tree—I know how much you love doing that—you’re going to bring a shit storm down on us.”

“I’m getting to the bottom of this.”

“Do what you want.” Then she hung up.

Pinching his finger into his fist, he closed the call and glanced about. “Damn,” he said, surprised and yet he had totally expected her reaction. He looked at his time display strapped to his wrist. Late afternoon. He glanced at his motorcycle.

Jon could pull into to their lobby, go in and ask what was going on, but if there was wrong doing, they would throw him out in a second.

“I should have known,” he growled.

*

Just when a food store was getting overrun, that was the best time to get in, grab a whole lot of stuff and get back out real fast. It was far easier to slip in and out during that kind of confusion. Unfortunately the Iruno-Co Shopping Center and Mall had been raided last night, and the dregs were nowhere around that place.

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And now the shopping center was now a total mess and mostly cleared out. Outside in the parking lot were cordons and police bots roaming the area. And this was the reason why getting into a shopping center late was a bad idea. As one of the police bots hovered by, beeping and whirring almost silently as it moved, Koto Aro quickly ducked behind a square support beam and held his breath. The bots, like big spheres the size of beach balls and painted in black with white lettering, could detect sound waves, heat signatures and micro electric frequencies.

But it didn’t matter, because Koto held his breathe to keep extra silent. The bots were smart, so a blown leaf or the sound of a dog loping about would catch its interest pretty quick. They had sensors and antennae all over the place and were designed to intercept. Upon finding that something was not of interest, it would move on.

For the heat signature, that was no problem either. All of Koto’s clothes were lined with an inner fiber that prevented his heat signatures from spreading around where the police bot’s sensors would see them—so long as he stayed behind a physical object that was.

As soon as the bot moved off, he glanced around for Nova and Kawa but he couldn’t see them. The bag he had wadded up in his hand was heavy and his skin was sweaty. They had found a lot of good stuff, but the vast majority of it all had been looted and taken away by the rioters, what had remained was trucked off in the night and the place cordoned off.

Still, it wasn’t much. They needed to find more.

Only scraps were left behind. A stray can of fruit here, or some packaged dried meats there. Koto had gotten lucky when he found an intact refrigerator unit with a bunch of hard ice inside. But under that, there had been frozen dinner foods.

He looked around again and then mopped his brow with the back of his hand. The beads of sweat rolling down the back of his neck made him itch and he scratched at the spot.

Upstairs he heard something, clattering around, and that was damn loud. Kawa was always way too loud. She was going to get them caught, or worse, killed. He moved toward the stares, his sneakers squeaking over the tiles as he looked this way and that, keeping a careful eye out for the bots.

Now if you could manage to take one of those down, then the parts would go for a pretty nice trade, or serve to augment a makeshift weapon or piece of tech, but fighting bots always drew more bots, which turned into a battle, which ended up leading to deaths.

And Koto wasn’t about deaths.

He would keep his people alive. His dregs were not expendable like some other groups treated their members. When life was hard, the hardness of people came out and was let loose. It was a sickening thing to see at times.

With those thoughts, he nudged the folding short sword clipped to his belt and made his way up the stairs.

When he got to Kawa, he found her poking around some bags as she slipped something inside her sack. “What are you doing?” Koto asked. “I heard you making noise from downstairs.”

“It’s not my fault, this stupid can fell of the table. I thought it was full.”

“Listen,” he said in a near whisper, “it doesn’t matter where the ‘fault’ lies—just don’t do it, kay? There’s a bot downstairs.”

“Where?”

“It went off toward the east wing.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Koto said. “Just be more careful, Kawa.” He looked around. “Where’s Nova at?”

Kawa, a short girl with dark eyes and black hair cut evenly to below her ears, shrugged. “Last time I saw her was in the food court.” She was wearing a black shirt and leggings, her white sneakers dirties and worn. Over her shoulder was slung her sub-machine gun where it hung in easy reach in case she needed to start shooting.

“The bot’s headed that way,” said Koto.

“She can handle herself.”

Koto turned to address the short girl. For fourteen, she was definitely a little stunted for her age, but that was to be expected these days. “Listen,” he said. “We have to stick—“

Suddenly a horn sounded from outside. Following that, there was a crash and a loud bang. Both Koto and Kawa sucked in a quick breath as they lifted their heads.

“What was that?”

“Not good,” said Koto.

“Hey!” another voice hissed from above.

He looked up and saw Nova above on the walkway and his heart skipped a beat. Nova was Koto’s girlfriend, and she was just shy of one inch below his own height. Her blonde hair was tied back into a ponytail that hung over her neck and swayed in front of her face.

Koto shrugged with a question, but Nova said no more, only beckoned them to go to her.

Koto nodded. “Come on, Kawa.”

She sighed, shaking her head. Koto was always quick to listen to Nova—never anyone else in the group. It was so annoying.

“Keep up,” he hissed from in front of her as he made for the stairs.

“I am,” she said, though Kawa wasn’t certain he heard her.

They both ran, careful to keep their shoes from tapping the floor tiles too loudly, but since they were wearing sneakers—that was no problem.

Kawa wondered what was going on outside, and her heart beat a little faster with anticipation as they met Nova on the walkway.

“Guys,” she said. “Let’s go to the roof. Something’s going on outside.”

“We should be careful,” Koto said.

“Mairu’s hasn’t come down.”

“Really?” asked Kawa. “She might have taken another way.”

Nova shook her heard. “No, she’s up there.”

The blonde girl then loped ahead of them toward the stairwell that led to the roof. As she moved toward the door, she pulled out her pistol, a massive thing if ever Koto ever saw one. How it didn’t crack her wrist with every shot, he didn’t know.

Kawa followed them up the stairs. Breathing a little faster, she sighed, feeling tired and disappointed that their haul so far was pretty bad. She didn’t want to come back out too early.

Her brother Karu wasn’t the only one who was sick. Most of the dregs were.

It was strange.